Online advertising is an important advertising medium that continues to grow rapidly as use of and access to the Internet expands. In particular, the Internet continues to make available ever-increasing amounts of information which may be stored in databases and accessed therefrom. Additionally, with the proliferation of portable terminals (e.g., notebook computers, cellular telephones, personal data assistants (PDAs), smartphones and other similar communication devices), users are becoming more mobile, and hence, more reliant upon information accessible via the Internet. Accordingly, the connectivity available via the Internet is frequently used to “surf” or lookup information available on the Web.
Mobile computing applications such as electronic mail (e-mail) or Internet browsing has particularly become more and more popular on mobile devices. Unfortunately, online advertising has not effectively leveraged the proliferation of mobile devices, especially not on mobile devices having small display screens. Consider cellular phones, smart phones or PDA devices as examples, most of these devices have a display screen size about two inches to four inches. This limited display real estate makes it difficult, if not impossible, to effectively place advertising information onto the screen together with user information such as, browser search results, video, application user interfaces, etc. Conventional systems typically replace user content with advertisement content. As may be understood, this diminishes the user experience and compromises effectiveness of the advertisement.